Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/20

 the final test, from which he might or might not come alive.

And how many of those others—his judges—lay quiet and still in unmarked graves?&hellip;

In the dim light he looked critically at his hand. It was perfectly steady; shamefacedly—unseen—he felt his pulse, it was normal: he was not afraid, that he knew—and yet, somehow, in the pit of his stomach there was a curious sort of feeling. He recalled the first time he had batted at school before a large crowd: he recalled the time when, lying on an operating table, he had seen the doctor fiddling with his instruments: he recalled those horrible ancient newspapers in the waiting-room at his dentist’s: and grimly he realised that the feeling was much the same. It was fear of the unknown, he told himself savagely; moreover, he was right. Yet he envied fiercely, furiously, the man sleeping in the opposite corner who came to war with a walking-stick.&hellip; But the man who came to war with a walking-stick, who slept so easily in his corner, who swore because he could not get a motor-car,